Psalms for Skeptics. Kent Gramm

      Psalms for Skeptics

      (101–150)

      Copyright © 2014 Kent Gramm. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions. Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

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      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

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      ISBN 13: 978-1-62564-853-2

      EISBN 13: 978-1-63087-909-9

      Manufactured in the U.S.A. 03/24/2015

      for Ruth

      Psalm 101

      O when wilt thou come unto me? (Advent)

      You come, I go: one sight of the white Light

      and this body drops alone, familiar bone

      cold forever, an undertaker’s stone

      in a lake of my children’s tears. All right.

      What’s left to want but a sign, some surprise,

      kindness where the waters of memory

      part, Jesus? When you do come unto me—

      materialize to my lidded eyes—

      what will I be? How will I see what I

      don’t want to see? What I am afraid of

      is what I want: the unsupposed glory

      that penetrates light, the postponed beauty,

      the starry child of everlasting love,

      the face of truth, beneficent and gory.

      Psalm 102

      My heart is smitten

      My heart is smitten. Something happened here,

      inside, like a fire blown out with a bang.

      Fell, turned green, passed out. It wasn’t a scare:

      it was the real thing. The fat lady sang

      like a locomotive. Me, on a cart,

      an hour from dead. They put me on a table

      and Jesus ran a wire into my heart,

      opened a tube; stepped back into fable—

      but I knew. He was there. He left a sign,

      an artifact, a feather: I mean me.

      I was immortal once upon a time,

      bore frankincense; unique, I used to be.

      But now I see I am a different self.

      Survived for now, like everybody else.

      my days are consumed like smoke

      I can’t hear it, but I know it is ticking.

      The days go by with nothing done. Like smoke

      from a wispy fire—some dust-thin poems

      going out before they reach the flickering

      burn. Complain, why don’t I?—that would burn

      still more of what is left, a paper tear

      on a paper face in a paper year

      in a paper space. Do they also serve

      who only sit and waste? But let Indian

      Summer come, the lazy childhood haze,

      bracing fragrant taste of leaves in the smoke,

      maples grateful to the all-gracious sun,

      and remembering youth going where it goes

      uncompleted, ripe, and smiling away.

      I am in trouble

      My heart is stricken: I will lose you all.

      “Where I am going, none of you may go.”

      What’s worse is where that is, none of us knows;

      still worse, we all know. Whatever you call

      it, it smells of flowers for awhile, dust

      on the face, the mortician’s after shave:

      what theological word rhymes with “grave”

      that doesn’t tremble on the lip of “lost”?

      One night the Lord came to me in my sleep,

      looking handsome like David the Great King,

      O Israel, whose look, more powerful

      than horses, calls the universe like sheep

      from particles, Eternity in flower;

      and I was saved. And I will be waiting.

      But thou, O Lord, shalt endure forever.

      The only comfort is the only comfort.

      For what is hell but life eternal—that’s

      it; just life eternal. Live forever,

      enemy! Just you and your friends. Quiet.

      Except for an exploding star now and

      then, cosmos expanding like an apple

      a thousand miles per second, the random

      black hole gulping like a hollow drain, and

      so on and so on. You will get damn sick

      of your friends. Go see the fireworks every

      night, all night; one long night. You will all wish

      you were dead. That this satire of heaven

      would have had a Maker. That the humming

      in all that dark matter would mean something.

      Psalm 103

       Bless the Lord, O my soul

      O bless the Lord, my soul, whoever you

      may be, you keeper of our memories:

      you, whom I call mine though I am yours—I,

      the day-to-day perception and illusion,

      the child of the unconscious mind, body’s

      bedfellow, servant, and traducer, dead

      in a sweet dream of aphrodesia, dead

      in the lost cause of astronomy: me,

      loved?—not the clothes horse I know. But someone

      I don’t know who knows me is loved: you

      the aromatic of the lotus rose,

      beloved of the one and only One,

      loved, loved—and you know what I only wound

      and crucify: bless the Lord, O my soul!

      Psalm 104

       thou art clothed with honor and majesty